What are the most popular internet browsers in Oregon? Below is my highly unscientific study of Internet Browsing usage in Oregon (FKA the Beaver State, Go Ducks!). This is a simple analysis of the google trends data. Hopefully this is the beginning of a more interesting and detailed economic research project. The reason google trends dat is interesting is because it tells us how often people search for a browser. How often people search for a particular browser is likely linked to how often is it downloaded and used.

Google trends provides some insights as posted below. Firefox is clearly the most searched browser. Roughly 80-95 percent of internet users are windows users. Therefore very few internet users are searching for a program they already have like Internet Explorer (The same goes for Safari with Mac users). An aberration in the graph to note is the alternative browser Opera. Opera is far above the others in news. One should note that actual Opera events would create this distortion. The fact that people search for Opera and the Opera browser at the same time makes it difficult to separate the two in google trends. So a good use of this graph would be to compare searches of the two primary alternative browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Chrome.

One should note that Googles Chrome browser is gaining on Mozilla Firefox at a strong rate. If the Chrome browser can maintain its current growth it will surpass Mozilla. If the Google operating system manages to gain traction on computers and hand held devices, it might be able to dislodge the top (yet declining) spot that Microsoft was able to hold over Mozilla. Lets not count Mozilla out, its growth against IE in the last five years has been amazing.

In all I expect a hearty competition to continue in the browser market. This diversity should benefit consumers to a great degree. However its hard to justify so much investment and fighting in a market that nobody is making any income. That being said Oregon internet browser usage is a small facet of a larger battle for the the web and its massive ad revenue.

Editors Note: I drafted this post on Safari, and I typically use Mozilla Firefox on my home machine. Below is additional reading materiel on the subject. I wanted to add more stuff about the differing philosophies in the Microsoft /Google browser battle, however that is not in the scope of this post.